Something's Gotta Give-A Writer's Retreat

An Ekphrastic Essay inspired by Nancy Meyer's movie Something's Gotta Give

The Story Behind the Story

In October, I went on a writer’s retreat with my good friend and writing partner, Kaarin Marx Smith. During that time, I read an essay in The Isolation Journals about a poet who wrote a poem inspired by the film, Under the Tuscan Sun.

While I have heard about ekphrastic writing before, I always associated it with paintings and sculpture. I was thrilled to think about using movie as inspiration, especially my guilty pleasure, romantic comedies and so this essay was born, started on the first night of the retreat.

Kaarin’s sharing an essay inspired by our writer’s retreat on her Substack, A Life Unpacked too. You can read it here.

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Something’s Gotta Give: A Writer’s Retreat

Photo by Chris Henry on Unsplash

The trip to the coast was uneventful. They talked, they stopped for coffee and snacks. They didn’t worry about calories or nutrition. They settled in at coffee shop and wrote for a few hours until their rental house was ready.

Their temporary home was a 1900s beach bungalow, covered in clapboard with a wood shingle roof. It looked like something straight out of a Nancy Meyer movie. The windows were old, the glass wavy, and it felt like they were tucked inside their own little writing bubble. When they looked out, the world was distorted, blurred. Inside everything looked clear and crisp.

They rested and then one of them turned on some jazz (Ella Fitzgerald) and made pizza and set the table. They drank wine, not too much, just enough to foster a sense of camaraderie, The pizza was rich and warm, the salad crisp and cool.

They huddled under blankets and watched a movie, Something’s Gotta Give. They laughed loudly and knowingly and wondered how it was that they were so lucky to live like this, like they were the late-middle age characters in the same ‘chick-flick’ movie they were watching. The house had perfect furnishings, everything in the house matched, and there were no stains on the furniture. It was comfortable.

The scenes of the retreat flew by, the heroines wrote at a table in front of a window. One of them left to walk on a beach in an effortlessly casual outfit. They thought about how wonderful it was to have reached this point in their lives, the time when they have the means and the confidence to follow their dreams; to write at the beach. Maybe they could learn new languages, plan trips to Paris?

On the way home from the retreat they wondered if they could carry these heroic personas into their real lives. Would they find time to write, read, and linger over the dinner table every night? Would their husbands see the bright, new light in them and fall in love all over again? (Just like the men in all of Nancy Meyers’s films do?) Would it matter if they did?

In order for any of those things to happen, something’s gotta give. Hopefully, when it does, they will find a life in which they are the heroines of their stories, living life on their terms, and writing about it.

They are planning another writer’s retreat in Spring. It cannot get here fast enough.

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At the Check-out Desk

I’ve recovered from cataract surgery in one eye and have the other eye done next week. I’m growing weary of the recovery period, of constantly remembering to put drops in my eyes, not being able to wash my hair or face for days. But then, I think of how lucky am I to live in an age when I won’t be blinded by this condition. Three hours after my first eye surgery, I went from only seeing shadows to 20/25 vision. Sometimes I forget how miraculous modern medicine is. I get caught up in dealing with insurance, get frustrated with doctors who disregard women, and I feel negative.

I hope you are fine and benefiting from modern medicine too. And, if you aren’t, if you are frustrated, try to remember there are good things happening out there, there is hope.

There are stories I have to tell you about the history of cateract surgery, about 1970s television shows, and these surgeries I’m having but those will wait until another day. Be sure to subscribe if you don’t want to miss them.